REPORT ON MARCH 28 MEETING: MARY OLIVER

Seven of us gather on a misty afternoon to explore our responses to Mary Oliver's work. Some read Owls and Other Fantasies, some The Truro Bear, some Evidence. So many wonderful comments and ideas tumbled over one another, like pebbles in a rushing stream.

We debated whether Oliver's sensibility as a poet, as an artist in love with the sensuality of nature, is as valid a "way of knowing" as the empiricism of Bernd Heinrich. Oliver's approach resonates much more with some of us in our group than others. But no one denies having had at least one of those transcendent experiences in nature that Oliver evokes so well.

We identify that of the writers we have read, those who seem to write most powerfully somehow combine the scientist's passion for facts with the perceptions of their emotional and spiritual selves: the artist and the scientist dancing within one person, the artist-naturalist. We consider male writers we have read who are in touch with their "feminine side" as one member puts it. Oliver is most closely compared to Terry Tempest Williams, Rachel Carson and Robin Wall Kimmerer, all writers who embrace a holistic experience of nature, using their whole selves, the intellect, the body, the soul, and the imagination. It makes sense, considering that we humans are products of nature. Just where does the line between nature and non-nature lie?

The question arose, what are emotions for? Why do we have them? Is it nature or nurture? When we see wild geese winging their way in an undulating V, we respond with a catch in the throat. Is this because we associate it with some pleasant individual childhood memory, or because we--as a species, as mammals-- have co-evolved with nature, with migrating birds who foretell winter or joyous spring, for millennia? Is the study of our response to nature just as important as the study of non-human nature, perhaps these days even more important considering human driven climate change and escalating extinctions?

Mary Oliver invites us to deepen our experience of the natural world and embrace our "place in the family of things."

WILDFLOWER FESTIVAL SEEKS YOUR POEM!

The Potomac Valley Audubon Society will hold its annual spring Wildflower Festival on Saturday, April 17 at the Yankauer Nature Preserve, from 11:00 to 4:00 PM rain or shine. The festival coincides with the peak blooming of spring wildflowers. Guides will lead walks through the preserve for advanced and beginner wildflower identification. Walks suitable for families are included. Children’s activities are planned and refreshments will be provided.

For the third year in a row, the festival includes a special Poetry Walk component—original poems on spring themes penned by local poets will be posted all along the preserve’s Kingfisher trail where the majority of wildflowers are found. Those who wish to submit poems for posting are encouraged to do so! Submissions should be sent by email to pvnaturewriters@gmail.com. Or, send them by regular mail to “PoetryWalk, c/o PVAS, PO Box 578, Shepherdstown, WV 25443. The deadline for submissions is April 10.

POET MARY OLIVER IS AUTHOR FOR MARCH MEETING

PVNWG members will read works by poet Mary Oliver in preparation for our discussion on MARCH 28 (rescheduled date due to February snowstorm.) Members may read any of Oliver's poetry but the collections Owls and Other Fantasies and New and Selected Poems, Volumes I and II are especially recommended.

Mary Oliver is renown for her "passionate attention to the natural world." Perhaps her most well known poem is "Wild Geese" (See links to poetry below.) Her relationship to nature is similar to that of Thoreau and Emerson. As a teenager she lived briefly in the home of Edna St. Vincent Millay, where she helped Millay's family sort through the papers the poet left behind. Millay is seen as an important influence in her work. The style of her work has also been compared to Walt Whitman and Robert Frost. Read more Oliver biography at the Academy of American Poets website here.

Oliver won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for American Primitive in 1984 and the National Book Award in 1992 for New and Selected Poems, among many other honors. Here are some comments that underscore her reputation as one of America's finest nature poets.

Oliver locates wisdom in the wilderness she seeks in solitude, where discoveries about the self and nature's otherness can be made...Expressed in simple language and familiar imagery, evoking dark and joyous states, this vision of nature is often conveyed in an ecstatic voice that compels. Annette Allen, Encylopedia of American Literature. Steven R. Serafin, General Editor. Copyright © 1999 by the Continuum Publishing Company.

Poet Mary Oliver is an "indefatigable guide to the natural world," wrote Maxine Kumin in Women's Review of Books, "particularly to its lesser-known aspects." Oliver's verse focuses on the quiet of occurrences of nature: industrious hummingbirds, egrets, motionless ponds, "lean owls / hunkering with their lamp-eyes." Kumin noted of the poet: "She stands quite comfortably on the margins of things, on the line between earth and sky, the thin membrane that separates human from what we loosely call animal." Poetry Foundation website

A strong sense of place, and of identity in relation to it, is central to her poetry. Her poems are firmly located in the places where she has lived or travelled, particularly her native Ohio and New England; her moments of transcendence arise organically from the realities of swamp, pond, woods and shore. Robin Riley Fast, "The Native American Presence in Mary Oliver’s Poetry," Kentucky Review 12:1/2 (autumn 1993), 59; 65-66.

Her poems are filled with imagery from her daily walks near her home in Provincetown, Massachusetts: shore birds, water snakes, the phases of the moon and humpback whales. Maxine Kumin calls Oliver "a patroller of wetlands in the same way that Thoreau was an inspector of snowstorms..." As her creativity is stirred by nature, Oliver is an avid walker, pursuing inspiration on foot. For Oliver, walking is part of the poetic process. Oliver is also known for her unadorned language and accessible themes. Wikipedia entry

Online poems here and here

Photo of Mary Oliver and Diane Ackerman here.

RESCHEDULED FEBRUARY MEETING

In honor of Heinrich's book Winter World, PVNWG members plan to attend the Winter Wildlife Tracking field trip at Cacapon State Park on February 20. Free and open to the public, it is a family-friendly event led by Park naturalist Kelly Smith. Participants meet at the entrance to the Park Lodge at 10:00 a.m. Pre-registration is recommended but not required. (To pre-register or for more information contact Kelly Heldreth at kheldreth@hotmail.com or 304-229-6229. If the weather is inclement, call 304-676-3397 to make sure the trip is still on.)
After the field trip, PVNWG members will meet at the Cacapon Lodge restaurant to discuss Heinrich's book over lunch. Please RSVP to pvnaturewriters@gmail.com if you plan to attend, so you can be notified in the event of another last minute cancellation. New members are welcome!

FEBRUARY 7 MEETING CANCELLED DUE TO BLIZZARD

Today's PVNWG meeting is cancelled due to the Blizzard of 2010 and the poor road conditions that remain from yesterday's storm.

Notice will be posted here if the February meeting is rescheduled, but thoughts are that we may skip February entirely and discuss Heinrich's book WINTER WORLD along with our February author Mary Oliver at the meeting on March 7.

If you have any questions, please email pvnaturewriters@gmail.com

BERND HEINRICH AUTHOR FOR JANUARY 2010

At our February 7, 2010 meeting (CANCELLED DUE TO BLIZZARD OF 2010) we will discuss Bernd Heinrich's Winter World. Biologist Heinrich is the author of numerous award-winning books, including the bestselling Winter World, Mind of the Raven, and Why We Run, (he has also had a career as a top long distance runner) and has received countless honors for his scientific work. His most recent published book is Summer World. He studied at the University of Maine and UCLA, and is professor emeritus of biology at the University of Vermont. He divides his time between Vermont and the forests of western Maine.

Click here to read New York Times article SCIENTIST AT WORK: BERND HEINRICH; Signs of Survival In a Frozen Forest by James Gorman, from January 7, 2003. Click photo of book cover at right to see inside WINTER WORLD.

PVNWG Celebrates One Year of Meetings!

On a sharply chilly January 3, 2010 we marked twelve months of Reader's Club meetings and warmed to a brand new year of great reads and fresh insights.

The six members present (including one new--welcome!) gave Diane Ackerman's The Moon by Whale Light a thorough going over. This book is actually more like 4 books in one--it combines four lengthy essays on different groups of animals: bats, crocodilians, whales, and penguins.

We all praised Ms. Ackerman's skills in acute observation, bell-like clarity of expression, the breath-taking figurative language for which she is so well known, and her sense of humor. We also noted that her focus in this particular book included not only incredible detail regarding the natural history of the creatures being studied by the researchers whom she interviews and accompanies, but also on the very human natures of the researchers themselves. Some liked this facet of the book, others felt it was a distraction.

Although the essays were not originally written to be published together, we did detect a theme of human misconceptions about animals and the ensuing harm humans have caused to them. For example, bats being feared as evil, rabies-carrying, bloodsucking creatures of the night, attacking humans and getting tangled in hair--when actually they are highly important contributors to our planetary ecosystem, one of the least likely of critters to convey rabies to humans, are major pollinators, consumers of harmful insects, attentive parents, and all around remarkable and fascinating mammals. Sorely misunderstood in previous years, bat populations have been decimated severely by human actions, intentionally, and more passively, by loss of habitat. Bats colonies are also dying out due to a disease. To promote bat conservation, including installing bat houses go to http://www.batcon.org/

A related theme was how much we owe to dedicated researchers such as the ones profiled in the book--but also the vast amount there is to yet to learn. A whale researcher in the book remarks that "once people learn about [an animal] their indifference, which is always based on ignorance, will be replaced with fascination, which is based on knowledge." Questions about the very concept of intelligence and its expression in animals and in humans is woven through the warp of Ackerman's descriptions. The whale researcher again: "What we call intelligence may only be a kind of vandalism, just mischief on a grand scale. It might not be the only form mind can take, and it might have little to do with real wisdom. " Something to mull over next time you are sitting in commuter traffic.

Read this book and you will be astonished at what you learn about bats, crocs, whales and penguins. It has inspired us to learn more about these creatures, especially about our native species of bats. This is also a great read for those interested in exploring the historical relationship between humans and animals, and perhaps, for nurturing hope for the future.